Last Dance, Last Chance

by Ann Rule

  Ironically, this was the first time in a long time that Debbie knew where he was and whom he was with. But her earlier disillusionment with her marriage had begun to vanish, anyway. During his court hearings, and now locked up, Anthony was as loving and sweet as he had been almost twenty-five years earlier when they first started dating. She began to hope that they could start over. Anthony couldn’t be a doctor any longer, but they would find something else. He had such a creative and inventive mind, she knew he would work his way to the top again. All he needed was some encouragement and the love of his family.

  Tentatively, his children, Ralph and Lauren, started to write to him. He had never been the kind of father who had much time for his children beyond the occasional trip to the zoo, a boat ride in Florida, or a drive to buy ice cream. Now, they wrote to him almost every day, and he answered their letters. They began to look forward to the time when he would come home to them.

  Anthony wrote that he knew that the national media were fighting to interview him, but he had wisely turned them away. Comparing himself to Amy Fisher, the “Long Island Lolita,” in terms of public interest, he was afraid that the tabloids would “devour” him, too. “Sure she was guilty,” he wrote of Amy. “But she was also a victim.”

  And he certainly considered himself a victim. The more law books he read in the prison library, the more convinced he became that the attorneys who had represented him had led him down the garden path. Even in his embryonic study of the law, he had found any number of legal loopholes they might have used in defending him.

  All through Anthony Pignataro’s journal, when he became too overwhelmed by his terrible luck and the unfairness of the justice system and the New York State Board of Health, he added a little wry comment that seemed to make sense to him, although its meaning was vague. He blamed his bad luck on timing:

  “Well, this is the Nineties!!!”

  Whatever illegal activities Anthony Pignataro might have engaged in in prison, he was not discovered. He won his two months’ good time, and he was released on Friday, December 7, 1998, in time to spend Christmas with his family. Debbie was waiting, and his children were thrilled.

  That first day, Anthony spent the whole afternoon watching videos of the junior high school football games Ralph had starred in while he was gone. Ralph was thrilled to see his father so interested. His team had an undefeated record, and Ralph was the quarterback. Although he was still thin and lanky, Ralph had broad shoulders, and he was an excellent athlete as well as a top student.

  Lauren, a petite girl, was a budding gymnast, and her dad was enthusiastic about that, too. Debbie watched them all with tears in her eyes.

  They went out to have a steak dinner with Lena, Antoinette, Ralph, and Lauren at Anthony’s favorite restaurant, E.B. Green’s. Debbie and Anthony decided to spend the weekend just getting to know each other again. Their new life would be different, Debbie agreed, but it didn’t have to be worse.

  When they talked of bad times in the past, Anthony and Debbie decided they would have a truly fresh start to their marriage. They would renew their wedding vows at St. Bonaventure, the same church where they had been married. They wanted to prove to each other that they really were starting over with a fresh slate.

  Anthony wasn’t drinking, and his time with his family was different now. He was really with them. He had 250 hours of community service to perform as part of his sentence, and he chose to volunteer at a therapeutic riding center for underprivileged and handicapped young people. He did such a good job that the director of the center wrote a glowing letter to the probation department, extolling his “responsibility, kindness, and tremendous work ethic.”

  Debbie paid off Anthony’s $2,500 fine.

  “Mom,” Ralph said to Debbie during that first week of Anthony’s freedom, “do you think we have a real dad now? He’s not anything like he was before.”

  She wanted to believe that, too, probably more than her children did. But Anthony had been home only a week when Debbie got a letter that was so shocking she almost felt it burn in her hands. She read it over twice, disbelieving, and yet finding it all too familiar. All those years ago, when Ralph was only a baby, she had received the phone call from the girl who told her to look in the back seat of their car. And she had found the cards and the audiotapes that proved absolutely that her husband was having an affair. And there had been the “Moira incident” in Puerto Rico.

  Debbie had forgiven Anthony twice. She had walked through fire for Anthony, and she believed now that they had come to a new place in their marriage.

  But Debbie didn’t know that Anthony had been having an affair with Tami Maxell even before he went to jail, and that he still was. Once more, she never knew exactly where he was, and it had always been easy for him to deceive her. Tami was older than Debbie and in good shape because she worked out regularly at Gold’s Gym, Anthony’s sports club.

  This time, the letter in Debbie’s hands wasn’t from Anthony’s mistress. It was from Tami’s ex-boyfriend, who was obsessed with her and violently jealous of her affair with Anthony. She recognized the signature on the letter. Several strange phone calls had come to their house, but someone just hung up. Debbie had punched *69 after a few of them, and the name Sam Picone* and his phone number had come up. The name meant nothing to her. She had just assumed he was some kind of nut.

  Picone was an attorney, and he evidently believed that misery loved company—or perhaps he wanted to make Anthony suffer the way he was suffering without Tami. He decided that the best way to get back at both of them was to tell Pignataro’s wife.

  It was a mean and sneaky thing to do, and it almost broke Debbie Pignataro’s heart. Picone enclosed a letter that Anthony had written to Tami from prison.

  Far more than most women, Debbie had clung to her marriage. But the letter in her hands proved that Anthony hadn’t changed. She knew he never would change. All of her children’s hopes that they finally had a “real dad” were going to be shattered. She had stood beside Anthony while he was accused and convicted, and she had visited him every chance she could. She had suffered such terrible humiliation and stress, answered all the hard questions in grand jury, and seen herself on the front pages of the Buffalo paper and on television news.

  And it had all been because she still loved and trusted a man who was a liar and a cheat and an adulterer. This time, she couldn’t go back.

  But this time Debbie didn’t explode in a rage or accuse Anthony of being unfaithful. She told him about the letter from Picone, but she let him believe that she was still the deluded, stupid wife. She was buying time, trying to figure out what was the best thing for her children. If she left Anthony, she didn’t know whether she could support them. If she stayed, Ralph and Lauren could probably stay in Nichols School with their friends, and they could have their own home and their own rooms and a chance to go to college.

  And as ashamed that she was to admit it, Debbie still loved Anthony—or perhaps she still clung to the way she wanted to love him.

  The “honeymoon” period of their “new” marriage had lasted such a short time. Because she had pinned her hopes on a fresh start, it was harder for Debbie to accept that it was all a facade. Little shards of the shiny surface began to crack and fall away—just a few at first, and then they began to tumble until Debbie saw too much behind Anthony’s mask as the reformed adulterer.

  The pain in her heart hurt far more than the pain in her neck. She had endured four surgeries after the Florida boat accident, and none of them had completely taken away the pain. Now, she needed yet another operation on the discs in her neck.

  Debbie was biding her time to protect her children’s future, but Anthony proved to her almost at once that she couldn’t count on him to work out their desperate financial problems. The Lamborghini was long gone, of course. But Anthony went out and bought her a new Cadillac to celebrate their remarriage.

  “We couldn’t afford a new car,” she said, “much less a Cadillac. We
had a van, and that was fine for us.”

  And, as it turned out, Anthony was the one who drove the Cadillac; Debbie still drove the SUV. He’d always believed that expensive and showy cars were necessary to make a man look successful.

  But he wasn’t successful in the least. Anthony had been unable to find a job in the months he had been home, and he wasn’t trying very hard. They were rapidly running out of money. His mother helped him. Debbie never knew how much Lena gave Anthony, but she did note the regular withdrawals from their bank account almost every day, usually in the amount of a hundred dollars.

  Anthony was on something—something more than tequila. She and the children all noticed it. He drank, yes, but the way he kind of zoned out and fell asleep in his chair made Debbie worry that he was on something much stronger than alcohol. When she added his odd behavior to the frequent bank withdrawals, she suspected drugs of some sort.

  Debbie didn’t know anything about heroin. Not then.

  Anthony apparently didn’t realize how utterly betrayed Debbie felt now that she knew about Tami. Arnie Letovich was out of jail, too, and the two had reconnected. Anthony spent his days working out in the gym, writing down his thoughts in his “book,” spending time with Tami, or visiting Arnie. Tami often accompanied him to Arnie’s place.

  On February 26, 1999, Debbie passed the house where Tami lived and saw a Cadillac parked there—a Cadillac that looked exactly like Anthony’s gift to her. She pulled in closer so she could read the license number, and saw that it was her Cadillac.

  “I knew he was with her,” Debbie recalled. “I was so mad that I parked the van and used my key to drive the Cadillac home. I was picturing the look on Anthony’s face when he came out and saw the van there. I wanted him to know that he wasn’t fooling me—that I knew where he was and who he was with.”

  She would have liked to have seen that look on Anthony’s face when he came out and realized what had happened. But he was apparently too afraid to face her. He picked Ralph up at his ski club and dropped him off at home, but he didn’t come in.

  He called her later with the oldest excuse known to wandering husbands. “Debbie,” he said fervently, “it isn’t what it looks like…”

  The perfect, passive Italian wife had finally come to a place where she could hang up on him. Anthony didn’t come back. She told herself that she didn’t care where he went or who he was with. But she still did care. She confronted Tami Maxell and asked her bluntly, “Are you sleeping with my husband?”

  Tami fled without answering.

  Debbie had the locks changed so Anthony couldn’t come sneaking back in with more vows of love and commitment. She also cleared out their joint checking account, leaving him $5,000. She didn’t talk to him when he called every day, but Ralph and Lauren did. She knew Anthony was back to his familiar pleading mode, telling them that he wanted to come home to be with his family.

  But Debbie didn’t relent. The locks stayed locked.

  Anthony used the money he had left to get his own apartment in West Seneca. Although he called every day, he wouldn’t give Debbie or their children his phone number. Debbie was sure that he was spending much of his time with Tami.

  After her outrage subsided, Debbie Pignataro sank into a depression that was far worse than any she had ever known. She had been through a great deal in the first forty years of her life, but she had always managed to come back from grief and despair. Now, she wondered if she could do it again, knowing that there was no hope any longer for her marriage. It was as if all her losses were stacked one atop another in a tower of misery that had no stability, wavering in the slightest breeze. Just one more stress would surely make the whole structure collapse and fall down—and take Debbie with it.

  Debbie was in recurring physical pain from her neck injury—pain that held her neck in a vise and shot down her arms to her hands. A solid night’s sleep became impossible for her, and she was always tired. She put on the best possible face for Ralph and Lauren’s sake, but it wasn’t easy.

  Debbie had been seeing a psychiatrist for a year—since a month after Anthony’s indictment for Sarah Smith’s death. And the therapist had told her what she already knew: she was suffering from anxiety and depression. She dreaded leaving her home and suffered from a mild case of agoraphobia, meaning “fear of the marketplace.” And why wouldn’t she, with cameras pointed at her and her husband’s faces, with their names in the headlines day after day? Staying at home with the curtains pulled seemed so much safer than venturing out.

  While Anthony was in prison, Debbie was alone during the darkness of night while the winter winds off Lake Erie screamed around the house. They had Polo to protect them, but she longed to have Anthony beside her. He had come home, and she had felt safe for only a week. Now she could never be sure where he was or who he was with.

  Debbie’s psychiatrist prescribed Xanax to quiet her anxiety and ease her depression. It took the edge off, but she still found it hard to sleep. Her exhaustion weighed on her.

  Two days after Debbie discovered that Anthony was seeing Tami, she took more Xanax than her prescription called for. Two pills didn’t quiet her anxiety, and she took two more. Then, her mind dulled by a double dose but still racing, she unwittingly took more. It was not a suicide attempt; she was far too protective a mother and too devout a Catholic to even consider such a thing. She was just so tired…

  The minute she swallowed the last tranquilizer, she realized she needed help. She called her mother and a friend.

  Debbie was hospitalized very briefly on March 1, 1999, until the excess Xanax washed out of her system. She was relieved to be home again with her children, but the problems were still there—and growing worse. She could always count on her mother and her brother, although Anthony had managed to distance her from most of her extended family over the years.

  And, somewhat surprisingly, Debbie could count on her mother-in-law. Lena Pignataro might be helping Anthony out financially, but she was furious with him for leaving his family. She had accepted Debbie as another daughter, and she doted on Ralph and Lauren. Lena thought it was disgraceful that her son was seeing some floozie, and she lectured him that he should go back to Debbie and the children.

  In truth, Anthony was under far more pressure from his mother than he was from his wife. Lena was absolutely furious with him for leaving Debbie and Lena’s beloved grandchildren. She sent him a scorching letter:

  “I’m not playing games with you now or ever,” she wrote. “You and your whore deserve each other. I hate you both.

  “If you think you can do this to your family and get away with it, you are NUTS!…I will not let you hurt or scar my grandchildren. I will get even with you both before I die.

  “Stop bothering daddy’s friends. They don’t need you and your whore. You don’t deserve the Pignataro name.”

  Lena Pignataro told Anthony that she was writing him out of her will and that he was not to try to find out information about her buildings or even come to her funeral when she died. She planned to advise Debbie to sue him.

  “I never thought I would say it but I’m glad daddy’s gone,” she wrote to her wayward son. “He can’t see what you are doing to us.”

  Clearly, Lena’s approach worked. Anthony came by to see Debbie and the children in March. She described their meetings as “distant.” In April, he visited almost every day. To her surprise, they seemed to be getting along better. On April 21, she had a fifth surgery to relieve the pressure of a herniated disc in her neck. It eased her mind to know that Anthony was checking in on her and the kids.

  Anthony confided to her that he had received a death threat letter. He said he’d kept it from her because he didn’t want to upset her—but then he wanted her to know that they might all be in danger. Now Debbie wanted him to come back—she was so frightened.

  It was a decidedly odd spring in West Seneca. As the months eased toward summer, vandals attacked the Pignataro house and property. Someone wrote “KILLER KILLE
R KILLER” on the sliding glass doors that led to the patio on the back of their house and “DIE FUCKER!” on the fence.

  When Debbie told Anthony about the vandalism, he told her they had to take the threats seriously. It might just be stupid teenagers, or it might be someone with a more serious grudge against them. He said he had picked up the phone while he was there and heard someone who snarled “You will die!”

  It was frightening to think that even though Polo was there at the house, the vandals had managed to creep all the way to the patio door.

  Debbie felt safer when Anthony visited.

  Anthony applied for a job in Philadelphia. It was a position in a profession that Judge Tills had specifically ruled out in Anthony’s sentence after Sarah Smith’s death: the medical field.

  But Anthony had always abided by his own rules and no others. With the family, he drove to Philadelphia and had what he considered a most encouraging interview. On April 28, 1999, he wrote to the vice-president of a surgical care product line located in a veterans’ medical center.

  “I want to thank you and your board for the courtesy you extended to me yesterday. I truly enjoyed the opportunity to present myself and my credentials.

  “I also took the opportunity to take a short self-guided tour and talk with some of the staff. I was extremely impressed with the facility and its personnel. My family and I also enjoyed Philadelphia and the Zoo.

  “I truly hope that we will be able to pursue this position in the future. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

  “Respectfully,

  “Anthony S. Pignataro, M.D.”

  “We never went to the zoo,” Debbie remembered. “He was lying again.”

  He did not hear from the company about his application to become a manager. Although he intimated in his letter that he was new to Philadelphia, he had a rather unsavory history there from his days as a resident. He also added the M.D. to his name—a title he no longer was allowed to claim. In the era of computers, that would have been easy to check.